


love is a destination

by gealbhan



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Character, Character Study, F/F, POV Second Person, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26489767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: There’s a game inside. It doesn’t seem to be damaged, at least from your cursory glance. It’s for a system you recognize and have made a working model of, so in theory, you could play this game.But you’re not going to. Theories don’t always have to be tested. You plant your foot (making sure not to stomp on the game) and fold your arms with a huff. You will not play this—this lewd game you’ve salvaged from the garbage dump. You’re better than that.…Are you, though?Alphys plays dating sims and grows in the process.
Relationships: Alphys/Undyne (Undertale)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	love is a destination

**Author's Note:**

> happy (slightly belated) birthday, undertale! i wrote this almost a year ago -- around the same time i wrote [[a voice inside me beckons me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673077)] -- and have only now decided to unearth and edit it for this momentous occasion. i can't entirely see the screen through the tears from the concert, which i put on while i was writing, so! uh! have fun!
> 
> title from "black heart" by crj. enjoy!

You find a game in the garbage dump.

In and of itself, this is not a strange occurrence. You’ve been spending a lot of time in the garbage dump lately—which is totally not weird, okay?—and you come across a lot of things there, including games. You’ve played quite a few yourself with consoles you’ve rigged up to be able to play human video games. And most of them _did_ in fact belong in the trash, but it’s fine. Video games are fine. They’re an excellent way to force yourself to forget about all the responsibilities and problems in your life and still give you time to come up with an excuse while you keep ignoring everything.

And, you know, they’re fun in other situations too.

But this isn’t just any video game. It’s a—you shiver— _dating simulation game_. You’ve heard of the genre before. There are even some anime adaptations of them. And it’s—

It’s different, okay?! It’s _embarrassing_ , the rational part of your brain (small as it is) wants to say.

…Yet still, your claws twitch toward it.

Long story short: You black out for approximately ten to fifteen minutes and when you can process things again, you’re standing in your lab and the game case is lying on the floor in front of your refrigerator. You’re still standing by the door. You surmise that you threw the game. You have no idea where you got the sudden burst of upper arm strength.

You glance up at your refrigerator and are reminded that you need to restock your noodles, but you don’t move. You stare at the game. Its presence mocks you. Its very existence is the bane of yours.

Except, well, maybe you _should_ open it up, at least to check that the game within is still intact. Or that there’s even an actual cartridge or disc or something—you could just be freaking yourself out for no reason. How funny would that be, right?

(Not funny at all. But you laugh anyway. It echoes in the silence of your lab, and you are uncomfortable.)

A concerning amount of sweat, you realize, has accumulated on your body. Your face is on fire. It’s Hotland, you think as you fan yourself with another set of awkward giggles, and your lab is especially hot. Nothing to do with the game, you tell yourself. Nothing to do with how humiliating this entire situation is.

You press your claws together with a gentle _click_. Your legs itch to start pacing, but you stay stiff in place while you ruminate.

You should check the game out. Look at it—and then swiftly discard it, of course, maybe even take it back to the dump. Yeah. That’s what you’re going to do.

Keeping an ear hole out, you take a single step. Then another. You continue your careful trek across the room, each step sounding like a scream in the clinically silent lab, until you’re standing above the case. You lean down, quiet as a mouse still, and pop open the case.

There’s a game inside. It doesn’t seem to be damaged, at least from your cursory glance. It’s for a system you recognize and have made a working model of, so in theory, you could play this game.

But you’re not going to. Theories don’t always have to be tested. You plant your foot (making sure not to stomp on the game) and fold your arms with a huff. You will not play this—this lewd game you’ve salvaged from the garbage dump. You’re better than that.

…Are you, though?

You glance nervously either way. You remind yourself to take deep breaths. No one is watching you.

Eyes squeezed shut, you reach into the case and pop the disc out.

Your eyes open again. You look around again, tilting your head and listening close. Nothing. Okay. It’s okay. The universe isn’t collapsing in on itself because you touched the game.

Everything is fine.

So there wouldn’t be any problem if you just… played the game, right? There’s no real reason _not_ to. You’ve consumed much more embarrassing sources of entertainment in the past, after all, and—you know what, you’re not going to justify this to yourself anymore. You’re just going to see what this is all about. That’s it. Hit it and quit it, as they say.

…Do they say that? Has anyone ever said that? Specifically, has anyone ever said that in this context? You don’t think so, and you’re not going to say it aloud to anyone else ever now.

That’s not the point, though. Why are you still arguing with yourself?

You let loose a quiet scream, clutch the game to your chest, and scurry upstairs.

It’ll probably be so bad that you quit after a few minutes, anyway.

*

You do not quit after a few minutes.

In fact, after a few minutes, you’re hooked. The mechanics are fun, the plot is interesting—you’re satisfied without much, of course, and God knows how many series that admittedly have had terrible, terrible, _terrible_ stories but that you’ve devoured anyway, for whatever reasons (ha… ha… you’re not going to talk about it), but it really is compelling this time—and the many cute love interests you can choose from are only a bonus.

Well, they’re human love interests, so none _quite_ fit your interests. Then again, you’ve realized as of late that your interests may be broader than you’d once thought. At least there’s a wide variety of personalities and even genders. When it comes to these sorts of things, you aren’t too picky.

So enthralled are you by this game that you black out for about three days. When you regain full consciousness, you find that you’ve played through every route and gotten all of the good endings and some bad ones, the knowledge of each one embedded deep into your mind.

You also realize that you’re really out of instant noodles now, which might be what brings you out of it in the end.

On the way to pick up some more, you mull things over. Okay, so _maybe_ you’re lonely. So _maybe_ you’ve never been in a real relationship despite having had many crushes throughout your life, and _maybe_ you never really learned how relationships work. All of these are pure hypotheses. You are a monster of science who would never state such a bold claim without evidence.

But observations can always back theories. And throughout your life, you’ve observed this: You’ve always connected more to fiction than real life, seeing the world through a lens warped by video games and cartoons. Fiction has always helped you process and understand things. It’s more predictable than real life, but it still imitates it, and vice versa. You’ve never been certain how conversations are supposed to function in real life, how some monsters can just say what they’re thinking like it’s nothing—in fiction, it’s all so simple and clean, everything so smooth and, well, _scripted_. So can you really be blamed for, say, spending a long period of time talking in only anime quotes?

You don’t do that anymore. Well, okay, you repeat lines from anime a _lot_ , but they’re not all you say anymore. You can think and speak for yourself! …With a lot of stammering and inspiration from media.

But still, in general, you base your interactions with others off of fiction, because you’ve never been good at the whole “interpersonal interaction” thing. You don’t think it works too well most of the time, given your stutter and the propensity of your thoughts to stop mid-conversation, but in your opinion it’s the thought that counts.

So—maybe you can apply that principle to your romantic life (or lack thereof) too? You could learn how to Actually Date. Romance in fiction is difficult to take cues from, but something like this, that requires actual player input—it could work. Going off the principles you could learn from these games, maybe you could woo—

Well. The monster you have in mind is not important. All that matters is that you’re going to figure out how dating works from video games. You can almost see the progress bar blinking above your head.

This is a good plan, you decide.

Having gathered up all the packages of instant noodles you can carry at once in your arms, you do the closest thing to a fist pump you can manage. The cashier gives you a strange look but doesn’t comment. You’re used to this and just thank them before scuttling off. Your tower of instant noodles sways as you dash home, intent on putting your newfound ideas to the test.

You make it your personal mission to get your claws on as many dating sims as you can from now on.

(And by _as many as you can_ , you mean _as many as the garbage dump will provide_. It doesn’t always want to work with you.)

*

You realize you might have a problem when, during a meeting with Asgore, you whip out your phone under the table and open one of your games on it while he’s talking.

Okay. That sounds bad, but it’s not to be rude, you swear! You just focus better when you’re multitasking sometimes, like when you’re watching anime and bouncing a rubber duck between your claws or something. Something absentminded that keeps you busy. In this case, you don’t need to pay attention to looking at Asgore so much as you would a screen, because he’s real and here and used by now to your habit of never looking anyone in the eye, so you keep glancing between the side of his head and your phone. Every now and then, you nod along to what you think is a question or a statement you should agree with, perhaps reminding yourself you’re paying attention as much as you’re reminding Asgore.

Within a few minutes, this plan backfires, and you turn the bulk of your attention to your game instead of Asgore’s voice. So focused are you that you don’t notice Asgore leaning over until he’s already asking, polite as ever, “What are you doing?”

You gulp. Audibly. Your claws begin to sweat. “Um—er—you see—”

He’s not going to fire you, you tell yourself. He hasn’t fired you thus far, and you’ve messed up so many times! It’s fine! (Plus, you’re… pretty sure there’s literally nobody else who’d take this job at this point. It’s cursed, you hear people say. Last one got scattered across time and space, and this one—well, actually, you aren’t sure what people say about you, only that you’re another sign that no royal scientist will make it out unscathed.)

“Just—just playing a g-game, sir,” you squeak. The fact that you aren’t in one of the, ahem, steamier scenes of this game is the only plus side that comes to mind. “I—I wasn’t ignoring you, just—um—”

“Oh! How fun.” Asgore leans back, apparently unperturbed that, for all intents and purposes, you _have_ , in fact, been ignoring him. You don’t even remember what this meeting was about. Well, at least he can’t fire you! His brow crinkles in confusion, then. “What kind of game is it? It’s on your phone?”

Oh, right, he’s old. A silver goat, for sure, but—well, you don’t know _how_ old he is, really. You do know that it’s old enough that he doesn’t know anything about technology, and thank God for that.

You surreptitiously wipe sweat from your cheek. “Uh, you know, just… a game!”

“Well, that’s vague,” Asgore says cheerfully. “Would you care to tell me more? I used to quite like games.” His gaze goes somber like it does sometimes, reminiscing upon days long since passed.

You’re silent for a moment, glancing around. “No,” you blurt, and then you stand, shoving your phone back in your pocket. Your claws click together where they’re hanging at your sternum. “Um—s-sorry, sir, but I’m feeling kind of under the weather. Would you mind if we, uh, continued this another time?”

He lets you go, because he’s too kind for his own good. You’re having heart palpitations for a good two hours afterward.

*

Scarred from the experience, you never play a dating sim while you’re talking to Asgore or within fifty feet of his presence again. You do, however, keep playing them on your own time, devouring anything you can scrounge from the garbage dump.

As for playing them around other people—well, there aren’t many others you _could_ play with. You don’t hang out with Sans as much as you used to, and Mettaton gets, erm, peacocky when you’re not paying attention to him (though you do notice him peeking at your computer screen every now and then. When you point it out, he always criticizes your taste in fictional characters. At least he hasn’t seen the anime and game characters you based most of his physical appearance off of). Undyne is too cool for you to share your _really_ geeky stuff with, but sometimes when you’re sitting and watching her train you get out your phone, and sometimes when she’s cooling off you notice her bobbing her head to the music, though she doesn’t seem to get dating sims in general. To your immense relief.

Your point is: You keep playing dating sims, feeling as if you understand more and more the deeper you go. Maybe that’s nothing more than a placebo, but more than that, you like playing these, silly and embarrassing as they may be. If nothing else, they’re a good distraction.

And, well. By nature, you observe things. (Though that’s not to say you’re always _good_ at it.) And one thing you start to observe is that, after a while, the type of love interest you go for first has been changing.

No matter what, you still eventually go through all the routes—or at least most of them—because, one, you’re something of a completionist, and two, you might as well hone these skills to their fullest extent. But the first path you take is always the most self-indulgent, the character that appeals most to you.

First, you notice yourself leaning more toward the women options if they’re available, and the long-haired, generally feminine men—there’s always at least one—if they’re not. If you really couldn’t decide before, you’d flip coins, but now you only do that if you can’t decide between two or more ladies. (Though you wish more often than not that there were more games with options for open relationships. By virtue of never having been in a real relationship, you don’t know if polyamory is right for you, but in the virtual space anything is possible.)

Then you start to notice the rest of your love interests’ appearances morphing. Red hair becomes commonplace. Sharp teeth? Sign you the hell up! Muscles are rarer but always appreciated.

One of your favorite characters is tall and muscular (and not the svelte “muscular” you’ve found in a lot of games by and for men, either, but a straight-up beefcake) with an eyepatch and scars all over her skin. You rush through her route in under an hour and then play it again twice after you’ve beaten the rest of the game.

The only downside is that, personality-wise, she’s a gentle giant and a pacifist, open about her tender heart. Not to say that’s a downside in general. You’ve liked that in the past, but… it’s not what you’re looking for now, you don’t think.

That’s another thing that changes: The personalities. Where you once preferred sweet, kind, possibly older love interests, now you’re more into the brash, edgy types. Angry and passionate characters who take a while to warm up to you but always soften with genuine conversations and heartfelt gifts, which you figure out more often than not by some good old save scumming. (It’s hard to play these without manuals or walkthroughs, okay?! Though you like to think you’re getting better.)

You notice this with the sort of absent _huh_ that you might observe a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot toeing the line between a continuity error and foreshadowing, or uncharacteristic bubbling sounds from your noodles while they’re in the microwave. You can’t immediately attribute it to anything.

And then you realize that you might have another problem altogether.

It only clicks when you manage to pick up a game with monster love interests. They’re narrow approximations of what humans must think monsters look like nowadays, humanoid women with few real monstrous traits—some ears, sharp teeth, and odd skin tones at most—but among the options is a… naiad? Mermaid? Something of that sort. (You’d skimmed the exposition; you’ve given up pretending you play the majority of these games for the plot.)

And, well, she’s very familiar. Greenish-blue skin covered in faint but very shiny scales, subtle muscles, long maroon hair. No eyepatch nor any weapons (unless you count the fish she uses to slap a guy in one cutscene), but she does have a temper and quite the sailor’s mouth. All of these things together on their own are pretty appealing. But together, they’re—

They’re _Undyne_. Your friend. Whom you thought you liked completely platonically outside of aesthetic appreciation up to this point.

When you come to the realization that maybe your feelings run a bit deeper than that (your top understatement this year), it’s nothing short of a horror scene. Your controller drops from your claws, hitting the floor with a _thud_. You let loose a screech of, “OH MY GOD!” and move to fling yourself into your bed.

Only as you’ve done so do you remember that it’s still in box form, and you conk your head hard enough against the side that you can feel a migraine blossoming. You deserve that, you think. You curl up right there on the floor with a muted groan.

…At least your walls are padded.

*

All in all, you deal with this revelation with about as much grace as you can. It doesn’t change that much, in all honesty—you’ve never known how to act around Undyne, and she’s almost less observant than you sometimes, so she won’t notice if you’re blushing a little more heavily than usual or if you start having to drink a lot of water in her presence to maintain your temperature. All that really happens is that Mettaton’s teasing gets more heavy-handed. (Somehow, you aren’t surprised that he knew before even you.)

You hold back on the dating sims for about a week, tentative about blending your real life with video games to this extent, and then one night when you can’t sleep, you finish all of that monster dating sim in less than four hours.

It’s not good, but you _do_ like the Undyne-like character’s route. You spend another hour longingly staring at her CGs in the gallery, then pass out on your controller.

The next day, you’re back to your usual rhythm. Work, play, work, play. It’s not like you had much of a life to begin with, you reason. And if you play these games to make yourself feel better every now and then, and if you take a few notes about relationships while you’re playing, then who has to know? It isn’t the _worst_ thing they could judge you for.

And then that human child slips a note under your door, and you find yourself humoring them and their earnest—well, you think? You can’t get a real read off of their expression, which probably means they’re like you—face. Even though they’re a kid, and they’re otherwise very far from the person you _want_ to date.

You get dressed up, because you like this dress but have never had the chance to wear it. And hey, dating sim characters always say how nice the player looks, which has given you confidence boosts when you’ve just been wearing an unwashed lab coat or Mew Mew-patterned pajamas, but you always like to envision yourself wearing nice clothes like this when you think about real-life dates. How regular of a basis do you do this on? You are not going to disclose this information.

You head out to greet the human, an interface flashing against your eyelids when you blink, and—

Oh no. You’re forgetting something.

“Actually,” you yelp, “we still can’t start the date yet!!!” The interface disappears. You bounce on your feet the way you always do when you get to talk about stuff like this. “Umm, I’ve gotta give you gifts to raise your affection statistic, first! That’ll increase the chance of a successful outcome to the date!” The human is giving you a blank stare. You can’t tell if they’re judging you or if that’s how they always look. “Right…?”

You clear your throat and rifle through your inventory. You pause. There’s nothing quite geared toward the human, but it’ll be fine! It’ll work!

“Anyway, d-don’t worry! I’m prepared!” You flash your teeth in a way that does not show how prepared you are and might in fact make you seem more unhinged. Which, to be fair, you are, but. Whatever. “I-I’ve been stockpiling gifts in anticipation for a date like this!

“F-First, I’ve got—” you brandish the bottle from behind your back “—some metal armor polish!” You eye the gross bandage on their face and the stick at their side. A definite lack of armor. Unless the bandage is somehow made of metal? No, what are you talking about, they’re a human child, there’s no way they have the means to get or make that. “…Um, maybe you can’t use that.

“But!!!” You move onto the second item. One of your mental rules of dating is that you always have to have backups in case something goes wrong with your first choice. (And then the second, and the third, and—) “I also brought some waterproof cream for your scales! Your, uh… scales…”

That they absolutely do not have. Fuck.

“Uh, well, how about… this magical spear repair kit, that I… um… hey, let’s forget about the items!” you say, and it feels like pulling teeth. You kind of want to cry. You won’t. “Let’s just start the date!”

And the date commences, and you end up admitting what a sham you are to the kid. And somehow you end up roleplaying (you try not to pass out from sheer glee when the human suggests this) and loudly declaring your love for Undyne. Already pretty bad, and then it gets—better? worse?

You don’t know what it gets, but she _hears_ you, and—she likes you back? So maybe?? You’ll have a use for all those items after all???

But… not now. You have some things to take care of first. And after that, who knows if she’ll even—or if you’ll even be—

Best not think about it yet.

You can’t help but wonder: Why are dating sim protagonists always so perfect? You know it’s because they’re player-inserts, malleable forms for everyone to interpret and project onto as they wish, but for you, that only makes these sorts of games seem even more like wish fulfillment, a colorful fantasy that you were foolish to ever imagine could help you with real life.

You shake your head as you step into the True Lab. You’ve been so happy in your bubble of distraction, stretching the rope holding back your disbelief so far that it’s naught but threads now, but—

If they knew what laid in wait, even fictional characters wouldn’t want to be around you, let alone fall in love with you.

*

Or that’s what you think. Because somehow, even after the truth comes out, everyone stays in your life. And the Amalgams even seem—well, you won’t say _better off_ , because there’s no way anyone could be truly happy like that, but they’re doing as well as they can.

You know you can’t be forgiven overnight. You would be more upset if you were than if you were _never_ forgiven.

But you start to believe that, eventually, you can be worthy of forgiveness, most of all from yourself. That you aren’t just worthy of point-blank happiness, but that you deserve it. You’re considering getting a therapist above ground. It’s a work in progress. And so are you, and really, isn’t everyone?

In the meantime, you’re happy enough studying, and reading, and playing dating sims, and watching anime. After everything, you spend a week straight in the cocoon that is your new lab, barely seeing natural sunlight until Undyne busts down your door and yells, “HEY! DATE TIME!”

(Once you recover, it’s a nice date. Perfect, you’d say, though your standards are pretty low given you’ve never been on a real one before. You get ice cream together and sit together until the sun sets. When she kisses your cheek, you almost faint, which makes her laugh so hard she almost destroys the ground she has to grab for support.

You also get to give her all those gifts. She might not have a visible affection meter, but she assures you she appreciates them.)

Even after you and Undyne start dating proper, you still play dating sims. If anyone except Undyne asked, you’d say it’s ironic (they don’t ask, preferring to let you do your thing, which you both love and hate), but it’s—really not, as you admit one evening when you’re absently playing one on your phone as you wait for her to show up to dinner.

You’re not sure why, really. They didn’t really teach you about love or relationships or being a normal human being. In fact, most of what you can say you’d “learned” from dating sims is what _not_ to do in a relationship. There are so many unhealthy and flat-out weird dynamics presented as sweet and romantic with no hint of irony or criticism, meant to be taken at face value by the average impressionable player. And some dating sims that aren’t _bad_ in those terms just have subpar, cheesy writing. Love at first sight and that sort of thing.

…Those ones are, admittedly, your favorite. You’d call them “guilty pleasures” if you still believed in such a thing. Even now that you’re at least okay with yourself, you really like those sorts of corny, self-indulgent, and above all else hopeful stories. (Okay, “stories.”) They make you happy to play, and can’t that be enough?

You spend most of the date expressing this and more, though you only realize this when you catch a glimpse of the clock. Across from you, Undyne is smiling, that cute little half-grin she always does when you ramble about nerdy things.

You straighten. “Oh, God, has it been that long?! Y-You should have stopped me—I’m sure that was all really boring to you…”

Undyne laughs. At first, you shrink back, but she quickly takes your hand in hers, her scales cool and smooth (she’s been using that cream!) against yours. You hope you’re not sweating too much. Then again, isn’t she always wet—oh no, you shouldn’t phrase it like that. You hope you’re not saying any of this out loud.

You don’t seem to be, because all Undyne says is, “Hell no! I mean, I have no idea what you’re talking about, really, but you care about it. And you’re passionate about it. That’s all that matters to me.”

Your entire face boils. “Th-Th-Thank you,” you say in a near-whimper. And then you laugh, too, and squeeze her hand. “But I—I want to hear about you and what you’re passionate about, too! I mean, there’s no time limit on this or anything, right?”

“Why would there be?” Undyne leans back, grinning. “We’ve got all damn night, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” you say. You move to put your phone away, only to find that it’s already tucked into your pocket—and then, grinning, you adjust your glasses. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

(You talk all night long and, come closing time, are kicked out of the restaurant.

It’s worth it.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! if you have time to spare, comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/preludetoIove) | [tumblr](https://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com)


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